Clients often come to us thinking they have a product or idea that is greener than anything on the market. After spending some time with us, however, they often come away with new ideas about sustainability. One client found that the biggest environmental impact in their biobased product concept was the use of a pesticide used in Brazil that has been banned in developed countries for over 20 years. That analysis gave them the opportunity to work with Brazilian farmers to replace the pesticide with safer alternatives, reducing toxicity for both humans and fauna in their supply chain, with possible extensions through all of Brazil.

Several analyses have shown that consumer behavior can have huge consequences that seem to be beyond the control of the product manufacturer. Some of these manufacturers have developed public education campaigns aimed at changing behavior. Others have taken the concept back to R&D to see if there are ways to innovate out the impacts.

In another analysis, we've found that production of biofuels from forest residue would actually lead to a reduction of sawdust available for livestock bedding. As in the cases above, the client has the option to ignore the finding as not directly applicable to their business, or to proactively work with the livestock farmers to find alternatives or find a way to coexist.

So while we are constantly espousing qualitative tools like LCA and TCA, what we're really after is an understanding of the bigger system and how our clients interact within it. With that new picture, the path to sustainability always shows up as something bigger than one product or idea. But it always opens up doors to new ways of looking at the world. We won't get to a sustainable world overnight. But the journey will be worth it. 

Total Cost Assessment (TCA) is a key tool for organizations to evaluate their sustainable development considerations.  It enables a better decision making process by evaluating all of the "what if's" correlated to the choices.

For example, this method was recently put to practice in Japan to evaluate and compare the risks associated with creating biofuels from two different sources.  The study, facilitated by EarthShift founder and Chair of the TCA Roundtable, Lise Laurin, assessed the use of waste to produce methane as well as the use of raw crops to produce ethanol.

Looked at through the eyes of the stakeholders and the community, utilizing waste to produce methane not only provides a service by producing the methane but also by simply using the waste in conjunction with creating useful by-products of compost & manure. It creates a win-win situation on top of being cost effective. Dr. Kiyotada Hayashi of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization of Japan organized and funded the study.

For more detailed information on TCA, read up about it on our website or check out our TCA facilitation workshop coming up on April 26. 

This is a one day course for a comprehensive and in-depth experience in handling the ecoEditor for version 3, the new tool for data suppliers to create, edit, review and upload datasets for the database ecoinvent data v3. During which, you will learn how to use the various new features of ecoinvent, how to use the structured approach to get all necessary data for a new dataset, or how to make corrections to an existing dataset.

 

The next two workshops are planned at the SETAC Europe annual conference (from May 15 to 19 in Milano, Italy) and the 6th ISIE Conference (from June 7 to 10 in Berkeley (CA), USA) - more precise:

 

      * ecoEditor workshop with Bo Weidema on Wed May 18, 2011, from 10:45h-16:00h, room "Orange 2" at the conference site

      * ecoEditor workshop with Bo Weidema on June 6, 2011, from 09:00h-17:00h (room will be announced later)

 

If you are interested to participate to either of these two free workshops or would like more information, send an e-mail to support@ecoinvent.org, indicating which workshop you are interested to participate. The participant number is limited to 30. Early registration is thus recommended.

Check out this new video interview with Laurel McEwen, EarthShift's training & marketing manager, about the sustainability efforts with in the packaging community at the recent Sustainability and Packaging Conference in Orlando, FL. 

Our multi-step LCA training certificate program is designed to couple LCA modeling skills with LCA interpretation and report writing skills, preparing you to become an LCA professional.

April 12-14

Detroit, MI

Lise Laurin will lead an open discussion on LCA on Tuesday April 12 at 4pm,  

as well as present on

LCA; adding science based metrics to sustainability

on Wednesday at 1pm

and Total Cost Assessment; a triple bottom line assessment of sustainability

on Thursday, April 14 at 4pm 

Online Training Schedule